


Midnight Story

by SilverRowan_Ivy630951



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Panic Attacks, Bucky plays the piano, Captain America Steve Rogers, M/M, Piano, Shopping, The women go shopping, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26099890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverRowan_Ivy630951/pseuds/SilverRowan_Ivy630951
Summary: Bucky and Steve offered to pick up Tally's and Tina's kids from school and keep them overnight to give the women a day and night off from mothering."It won't be a bother," they said. "We'll be fine" they said. "We can handle it," they said.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is previously stated in the story that Tally and Tina live in apartments in the Tower (Talin works there, dealing with the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent people). The apartments they live in are connected by an adjoining door. 
> 
> They consider themselves family—sisters, though they're not related by blood—and they raise their 8 years old boys in a co-parent sort of situation. They both consider themselves the mother of two children.

The two women were in Tina’s living room when there was a knock at Talin’s front door. She went through and opened the door to Natasha, Pepper, Steve, and Bucky.

“Hey, guys! What’s up? We’re over at Tina’s.” She backed up to let them in. “You want to come on over?” At their assent, she led the way to the other apartment.

“We came to steal you two out for the day,” Natasha said when they’d reached the living room.

Tina blinked from her spot on the couch. “Huh?”

“We’re taking both of you shopping and, if we have time after, to a spa for manicures and pedicures,” Pepper qualified. “A little spider told me you have a date tonight. And Talin, you liked my shorts the other day.”

“Yes, shopping. That is the thing that I said.” Nat blinked a little too innocently at them.

Tally flashed a smile at the thought of Natasha quoting the movie _Home_.

As one, Tally and Tina traded a _look_ then moved their gaze to the boys. Tina grinned wickedly as Talin guilelessly asked, “Are you guys going too? Are you going to try on shorts like Pepper’s? I bet they’d make your legs look _fabulous_.” She couldn’t help the smile that managed to peek through before she was done. Stupid face.

Steve laughed and Bucky instantly shot back, “Don’t you knock it, dollface. My legs are fantastic.”

He sassily pointed his toe forward like a shoe model and flexed his impressive thigh muscle as his jeans leg pulled tight around it. Everyone chuckled and couldn’t help but agree.

After a minute, Steve stepped closer to the couch. “We came to offer to pick the boys up from school for you and keep them until tomorrow so you ladies can have a kid-free day and night. They can sleep over at our place.”

“We’ve certainly got the room,” Bucky interjected, having stood upright again.

Tally looked to Tina and shrugged her shoulders.

“We’d have to call the school and put you two on the approved pickup list,” Tina said as she thought about the logistics. “And you might get swarmed by children because of who you are. I’m sure you’ve noticed that kids tend to be observant when it comes to their heroes.”

“Yeah. Adults, especially in cities, tend to look past other people; kids, on the other hand… Not so much. Eliot recognized you that first day, remember, and that was with you two faced away from him.” An arched eyebrow accompanied that last statement.

“We don’t mind you picking them up. We trust you,” Tally assured them. “We’re just not sure that you’ve thought this through. Are you sure you want to chance it?”

Bucky shrugged as he gazed evenly at the women. “We can handle it. Or we can show up five or ten minutes after the rush. When you add us to the list, you can request the boys be told we’ll be there ten minutes late and to come out then.”

Uncertainty crossed Tina’s face. “If you’re sure…”

“We are,” Steve stated calmly.

“We can handle it,” Bucky reassured.

*****

“Oh, shit. We can’t handle this! It’s too much. I’ve taken out bad guys! I’ve punched Nazis in the face! _This is so much worse_!” Bucky’s breath started to hitch in his chest.

Steve gripped a hand around his friend’s closest bicep—the metal one. He squeezed hard in the hope that he might register the pressure through his panic. “Breathe, Buck. They’re just kids; just a lot of kids. No one is going to hurt you. I need you to breathe for me. Can you do that?”

When Steve didn’t get an answer, he turned to use his body to block Bucky from the small horde that ran towards them. Steve hoped to hide him as much as possible.

Hopefully, the kids would be more interested in Captain America then the man with him, even if that man was the Winter Soldier.

A hand grabbed his and he looked down. It was Eliot. Momentary relief washed through him.

Steve bent down and, as softly as he could manage while still having El hear him, he asked, “Will you and Jamie take Bucky somewhere quiet, maybe into or around the building? He’s having a really hard time with this many screaming people around him. I’m sorry. I’ll come find you after.”

Steve knew that if Captain America went anywhere, the kids would just want to follow.

The boy peered behind Steve to see Bucky with pure panic in every line of his body. Eliot’s face settled into determined lines. He briefly squeezed Steve’s hand, and melted away to grab Jamie’s and then Bucky’s arms and dragged them away.


	2. Chapter 2

Tally _loved_ jacket weather. It wasn’t too hot or too cold. Instead it was just right. Unfortunately, the day’s weather hovered around eighty-eight degrees and humid.

While she got the opportunity to laugh at all the people outside whose hair went crazy with humidity—her stick-straight hair not being affected much—everyone inside got to laugh at _her_ pathetically shivering self.

It was emphatically _not_ jacket weather at the moment, but she wished wholeheartedly that she’d thought to bring one along anyway. Despite the weather, or maybe because of it, she was so cold. Apparently the heat outside meant that all the stores had decided to turn their air conditioners down to ‘arctic blast.’

Tally greatly enjoyed shopping with Pepper and Natasha, she was sure Tina did too, but she was _exhausted_. Going from melting outside to freezing inside sapped most of her energy as well as made it supremely uncomfortable undressing to try on clothes.

She used to handle heat and sudden temperature changes so much better. She was from _Missouri_ , for crying out loud! Growing up, some summers felt like you were walking through the blazing heat of a desert and breathing in water _at the same time_. She knew hot and humid.

There had been one memorable day when her family’s digital thermometer just read as error dashes because it had reached its temperature limit and couldn’t go any higher. And she’d once seen it read one hundred and twenty in the sun before.

She’d also experienced a week in high school when January’s daily temperatures jumped from thirty-five, to seventy, to ten, to forty, then fifteen, and right back up to seventy. She’d gotten sick, sure, almost everyone had gotten sick, but she hadn’t felt this drained.

Did having a child change her body that much, or was it because she was within spitting distance of thirty?

And wasn’t _that_ a kick in the face. How the hell had it only _just_ hit her that she was pushing thirty?

In some ways, her life experiences made her feel _so much older_ than that. In others, she still felt like she was that naive eighteen year old girl excited to be headed out into the world on her own. There were so many things that she still didn’t understand or feel she could handle, yet, she was expected to be the all-knowing adult?

She remembered being a child and looking at everyone above the age of fourteen as a grown-up and thinking that they knew everything, had life all figured out. As she’d grown, not much had changed about that viewpoint besides the age of what she’d deemed ‘grown-up.’ Thirty _sounded_ so mature.

That sentiment made her feel incredibly young. But somehow, she was now coming up on thirty and expected to always know everything for her kids and for herself. Much of time, she felt like she was playing at being an adult.

The saying ‘fake it until you make it’ could apply to so much in her life. That’s what she felt like she’d been doing for years. She just didn’t feel like she’d made it yet.

Lost in thought, Tally aimlessly walked around a random corner in the store. She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Her mind was suddenly filled with the loud screeching halt of an interrupted record.

She stared, entranced, at Jacket Heaven. She almost heard the chorus of angels as they sang in the background and imagined a bright light emanating from the rack upon rack of beautiful clothes. Those singing angels probably also wept.

_Whoa_.

She had just wandered around by herself as she waited for the others to finish in the changing rooms. She hadn’t chosen much to try on, not to mention the cold gave her incentive to hurry, so she’d been finished first.

There were so many different kinds of jackets that she goggled. Tally had a weakness for jackets. She knew this and tended to steer clear of them. She’d rather buy something her little family needed rather than something she, herself, only wanted.

She circled the many different pieces. She saw leather jackets, denim, bomber style, quilted, faux-fur, overcoats, _cashmere_. There were even more, kinds she couldn’t even name. There were heavy, light, short and long coats. There were even freaking trench coats!

Tina found her there some time later with Pepper and Natasha close behind. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you! Thought maybe you’d gotten lost,” Tina told her as she tilted her head to examine the jackets her sister was standing in front of.

Tally barely even heard her. She was so lost in thought that when Tina wrapped her arm around Tally’s waist, she jolted like she’d just noticed them.

“Oh, hi! Help me decide. They all fit really well but I can’t choose. I’ve figured out about how much I’m already spending and I can only rationalize getting one. I’ve still got bills to pay, even if we’ve dropped rent and most food costs.” She glanced to Tina, looked for her understanding. She felt better when Tina instantly nodded right along with her in agreement.

Nat and Pepper looked bemused.

Tina tilted her head again and studied the options.

The first was a fabulous leather jacket in such a rich, dark-chocolate that it was almost black. It had some buckles and a ton of maybe-pockets, some with zippers and some without. “Do those zippers lead to actual pockets?” Tally reached out, and unzipped one and stuck her hand inside.

“First thing I checked. Stupid girl’s clothes with useless pretend-pockets. I passed over three similar jackets because of that. This is one of the reasons I have trust issues,” she joked.

Natasha and Pepper snorted at that as they watched the two women patiently, bided their time.

Tina moved her gaze to the next jacket. It was a pretty and stylish dark blue button-up denim jacket, again, with real pockets. It had one arm rolled up and there were dark violet-colored lavender embroidery flowers. They started right above the elbow, went up the left arm, over the shoulder, and ended above the left breast pocket.

The last jacket Tally was thinking about was a dark burgundy bomber jacket. It had two zippered pockets in the front, one hidden button pocket on the front inside panel, and a zipper on the left arm.

“I thought about that jacket too. It’s pretty but I don’t know what I’d wear it with or where I’d wear it to.” Tally pointed to a leather motorcycle jacket in a warm navy blue with dark purple accents.

“So what do you think?” Talin looked at Tina and waited for the verdict.

“I forgot how good of an eye you have for your clothes. They would all look really good on you. That chocolate leather one is gorgeous, but knowing you, I think you’d find the most use out of this one.” Tina pointed to the bomber jacket. “And we’re about the same size so I can totally steal it sometimes.”

Tally grabbed the one Tina picked out and put it in the basket Natasha was leaning against. Neither woman noticed Pepper and Nat exchange glances.

Pepper grabbed Tina and Talin’s hands to drag them to look at some tops. Natasha discretely lagged behind.

Talin was headed to the changing room with the others when Natasha reached them. Nat noticed the shirts they held and complimented them. “That is a good color for you, Tally. And I that that pale blue will look great on you, Tina.”

Talin looked up, sidetracked from wondering where Nat had been. “Thank you. Pepper talked us into trying them on, along with a few others.”

They filed into a changing room. Pepper and Natasha trailed in behind them, much to Tally’s surprise. With a mental shrug, she started stripping out of her shirt. Goosebumps rose again on her chilled skin.

So far she’d tried on shorts, pants, and jackets. Also some shoes, though she hadn’t gotten any of those. This was the first of any shirts she’d tried on.

When Talin pulled her top off, she heard the Nat suck in a breath and Pepper exclaim, “Oh my god!”

Talin jumped at the unexpected sound. She quickly pulled her head the rest of the way out of her shirt and looked around the room. “What? What is it?” She looked at Tina, who appeared to be as puzzled, having just done the same thing as Talin.

Natasha was the one to broach the subject. “How long have you had that bra?”

Hesitation was an odd look on her. Was she trying to spare Talin’s feelings? Tally knew it was an ugly bra. It was a nude color and completely plain. That’s all that had been available for someone her size.

Tina looked over to Tally, brow crinkled, not sure what the problem was.

“Um, I got rid of all my old ones so this is probably,” she trailed off, trying to think of when she’d gotten it, “two years old?”

She looked over at Tina who nodded an assent. “Almost three. It was shortly after we’d met. You had just moved in after getting that new job. A few months in you’d gotten a small raise and we went bra shopping because you hadn’t had any new ones in the five years since Eliot had been born. I bought two, you got one. That’s all either of us could afford.”

“That’s right! I’ve had it going on three years. Not too long, considering. Plenty of wear left.”

The two women seemed to want some kind of clarification so Tina explained. “Shopping for clothes is always listed under the ‘splurging’ category unless it’s absolutely necessary. ‘Necessary’ usually happens at Goodwill.”

“A day like today most likely won’t happen again for a very, very long time,” Tally added with a shrug. “That’s why you always want to buy stuff to last and choose styles wisely. We’ve both gotten pretty decent at fixing clothes.”

Pepper looked like she was trying to not let her mouth hang open. Nat’s face just looked blank.

Pep finally leaned back against the changing room wall. For some reason, she looked upset. “You don’t go shopping?”

“You’ve only gone bra shopping once since Eliot was born and that was three years ago?” Natasha asked. Along with her blank face, her voice sounded just this side of too even. She sat down on the little triangle bench in the corner.

“Technically I went one other time. I had an underwire snap on me. I had to get another one after the stitches finally got removed.”

“I remember that. You had to bind your breasts for a few weeks because you couldn’t wear a bra over the stitches. You were miserable,” Tina said, wrinkling her nose.

“Ugh, yeah. That was definitely awful. That’s when I threw out all my old bras. There was no way I could afford another ER bill and I really didn’t want to go through that again. But I couldn’t go with only one bra so I had to get another. I don’t like wearing it, though. I’ve got scars on my sides from it.” Tally shrugged in a what-can-you-do motion. A second later, she lifted one arm and nudged her bra aside an inch to show them what she meant. Tina followed suit.

Pepper came closer to look. “How are you not in pain from these?”

Tina and Tally gave the women identical confused head tilts.

It was Tina who gave the women their next shock. “Bras always hurt. But they’re a necessary evil. If I didn’t have to wear a bra, I literally never would. Unfortunately, neither of us can get away with going commando.”

“Fuck, yes,” Tally agreed wholeheartedly.

All conversation tapered off after that. Tina and Tally focused on trying on the shirts.

Without Tina or Tally noticing, Pepper and Natasha silently conversed. Their looks included concern and determination. They were going bra shopping next.

Tina had a date that night with Sam and Tally was bound to go on one sometime. Everyone, except maybe Tally, saw how Steve and Bucky looked at her.

Even if she didn’t go on any dates, they silently vowed that they would find both women something stunning. They were getting them pretty bras that _didn’t fucking hurt_. And then they were setting their old ones on fire.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song lyrics are from Nat King Cole’s _Unforgettable_ , but the piano version Bucky is playing is this: Unforgettable – Nat King Cole – piano – Harry Völker <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKrF3h7p16A>

Twenty minutes after Eliot left with Jamie and Bucky, Steve found them in the school’s music room.

He walked in on silent feet, closed the door, and leaned against it. He used his body to obscure the bit of window not covered by children’s drawings. Steve needed to block the door from anyone who might come along. This was private.

It hadn’t been hard to find them. Steve understood Bucky. He’d seen how his best friend coped. He’d seen it more times than he could count, just as Bucky had witnessed Steve’s own coping mechanisms.

When he entered the building and heard distant piano music, he just followed the familiar sounds. By the time he stepped into the room, Bucky had just gotten to song number four of the personal playlist in his head. Eliot and Jamie sat next to him on the piano bench like two little bookends. They leaned gently into Bucky’s sides as they quietly watched him play.

Up against the door, Steve closed his eyes and just let the music wash over him. His brain automatically supplied the lyrics.

In a way, the song perfectly described the pair of them. Even when the worst happened, they always found each other. No matter what either of them had gone through, what they felt had never died.

Memories played through Steve’s head. They made him sad as he listened to Bucky play and thought about all they had endured, both together and apart.

_Unforgettable_

_That’s what you are_

Four-year-old Steve walked down the sidewalk when a noise stopped him. He found a little brown-haired boy curled into a ball in an alleyway. He was being kicked repeatedly by two bigger kids. Steve could barely lift the piece of wood he found next to the trashcan but he did what he could to protect the fallen boy.

_Unforgettable_

_Tho’ near or far_

Steve was a small child when he had wandered away and gotten lost so far from home that he just sat down and cried. Bucky had come for him. He’d wiped his tears, and led him home.

_Like a song of love that clings to me_

_How the thought of you does things to me_

Steve found ten year old Bucky crying behind Old Man Marley’s grocer after his mom miscarried what would have been his second baby sister.

_Never Before_

_Has someone been more…_

Steve had almost died many times from one sickness or another, but Buck had always been there for him. He’d always found just one more blanket for him or pulled Steve out of his head or managed to make him laugh with some stupid joke. Then he sat down and helped Steve with the schooling he’d missed. 

_Unforgettable_

_In every way_

The 107th had been captured and Steve didn’t know what he would find, or if Bucky was even still alive. But he’d sure as hell gone looking anyway.

_And forever more_

_That’s how you’ll stay_

Steve watched him fall from the speeding train in the Alps after Bucky protected him. He had been utterly destroyed.

That last mission in ‘45, Steve had brought the damaged plane down in the Artic to save countless lives. But he’d done so believing the last of his family, his heart, had died.

_That’s why, darling, it’s incredible_

_That someone so unforgettable_

After SHIELD’s suicide mission months ago, Steve had come within inches of dying. As he’d holed up, badly bleeding, he’d agonized over the thought that he would never get to see Bucky again after he’d finally gotten him back. But the damn stubborn man had come for him once again.

_Thinks that I am_

_Unforgettable, too_

As Steve listened to the piano interlude, he thought about just how extraordinary Bucky was. He had been forcibly frozen. He’d gone through decades of unspeakable torture. He’d endured inhuman misuse and mistreatment.

And, yet, he’d survived.

Despite everything, they had never managed to erase Steve. They’d only succeeded in deeply burying memories of him.

_Unforgettable_

_In every way_

Bucky had found the strength to start healing his mind.

_And forever more_

_That’s how you’ll stay_

Against all the odds, Bucky and Steve always found each other.

_That’s why, darling, it’s incredible_

_That someone so unforgettable_

They always saved each other.

_Thinks that I am_

_Unforgettable, too_

They always loved each other.

A tear slipped down his cheek but he didn’t bother to wipe it away or even open his eyes.

As Bucky started into his fifth song, Steve felt a tiny hand slip into his.

He looked down to find Jamie looking up into his face, his eyes filled with unshed tears. Steve crouched down and gently gathered the boy into his arms. He lifted him up, took what comfort was offered, and tried to give some back.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if I'll ever post this entire story, but I was thinking about this part of it and wanted to share it with people. This was the first story I'd ever really sat down to write. Depression was kicking my ass and this was my attempt at feeling better. 
> 
> So here's a small snippet of it. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
